"I ran to help her, but she, striking bravely at the treacherous savages with the ox-goad, screamed to me to fly for the guns. I turned as she fell under the stroke of a tomahawk. The murderers leaped after me, yelling and firing. Rifle balls and arrows whistled about me, some piercing my shirt. But I gained the cabin unhurt. On the pegs beside the door lay my father's rifle and his old Queen Anne musket of the Revolution, which I had that morning charged half to the muzzle with swanshot in preparation for a bear which had been stealing our porkers. "Barring the door with one hand, I caught down the musket with the other, and fired through the nearest loophole. My pursuers were coming on fairly in a body, and the distance was such that the swanshot scattered just enough to cover the foremost warriors. One fell dead and three more were wounded. In a twinkling all others than the one killed leaped to either side and checked their rush. "But their chief came bounding up from the rear through their midst, flourishing his bloody tomahawk and yelling to them to come on. Young as I was, if given a support for the heavy barrel, I could handle my father's rifle as well as he himself. The chief fell within twenty paces of the door, with the hole of the rifle ball between his glaring eyes. At this, fearful that they had run upon a trap, the red warriors ran dodging and side-leaping to the nearest brush, while I caught up a knife and rushed out to scalp the chief--" "_Por Dios!_" cried Don Pedro. "You ran out!--you took the scalp of the chief under the eyes of his followers?" "My mother's scalp hung at his belt. I was mad with fury. I would have struck the murderer even had the others already turned." "They did turn?" asked Alisanda, her eyes widening with the horror of the vision she pictured. "They turned as I burst from the cabin. I was surrounded--seized fast--but not before I had torn off the scalp of their chief and shaken it in their painted faces!" My eyes flamed at the memory of that fierce vengeance. "_Madre de Dios!_" breathed the Spaniard--"You stung them to wildest fury!" "I sought to make them strike me down. Better death under the tomahawk than the slow agony of torture at the stake. What greater shame to them than for a boy of twelve to kill two of their most famous warriors,--to taunt them with the bloody scalp of their chief?" "Yet they spared you!" whispered Alisanda, her eyes fixed upon my flushed face. "For the torture. When they took me north to the Shawnee towns, I was made to run the gantlet. Being quick-footed and nimble, I avoided most of the heavier blows and midway of the line dodged out sideways, tripping up the old squaw who sought to stop me. Before the rabble could overtake me, I had set myself in the midst of the chiefs and foremost warriors of the village, whose dignity had prevented them from joining in the lesser torture.